Spy Magazine

Spy Magazine to Cease Publication: Spy magazine, known for its skewering of celebrities and its "separated at birth" photos, is ceasing publication after 7 1/2 years, the magazine announced. Tony Hendra, the editor in chief, said principal owner Jean Pigozzi closed Spy after failing to sell it. The 78th and final issue of Spy will be on newsstands in New York on March 1 and nationally March 8, said advertising director Elaine Alimonti. Pigozzi had no comment, his spokesman, Michael Simoff,

What: The Spy 100: Olympic Edition With its 11th annual list of the year's 100 "most irritating events and people and concepts," Spy Magazine has adopted, fittingly, a most irritating Winter Olympics theme--complete with the heads of Ellen DeGeneres, Marv Albert and Oprah Winfrey superimposed on the bodies of figure skaters and judges' "scores" for obnoxiousness (TV's "Ellen" gets a perfect 6.0; El Nino a 5.36; the Spice Girls a 4.09).

Hoping to deliver forbidden news to a China muted by censorship, the L.A. Weekly has joined in an international press campaign that is trying to break through government restrictions by sending bogus copies of the official Communist newspaper via the fax machine to support the pro-democracy movement. A spokeswoman for the L.A. Weekly said the Nov. 9 issue will contain excerpts from what appears to be the Communist newspaper People's Daily, the Chinese government's official publication.

George, the new political magazine edited by John F. Kennedy Jr., is arriving on a tidal wave of hype and media interest that all but obscures the launch of another power-minded publication. The Weekly Standard went on sale Monday, quietly. Unlike George, a bimonthly that reaches newsstands Sept. 26 sporting a cover shot of super-model Cindy Crawford, the right-of-center Standard features a gun-toting Newt Gingrich, blasting his way high above Washington.

Who is Celia Brady and why is she saying all those terrible things about Hollywood? Brady is the pseudonymous show business columnist for Spy magazine, the 2-year-old New York-based satirical monthly that startled the journalism world with its cutting-down-to-size exposes about the Rich and Famous.

The quality of smugness tends to work better amid the impersonality of elegant font on the printed page than on screen with a smirk and an overbearing laugh track. Nonetheless, "The Spy Magazine Hit List: The 100 Most Annoying and Alarming People and Events of 1992" (at 10 tonight on NBC, Channels 4, 36 and 39) is nearly as funny a TV special as it is a magazine spread, with actual film clips of Quayle, Perot, Schwarzenegger and the usual Spy suspects inevitably compounding the merry malice.

You can't legislate my morals, Or anything I do I can have my pot, or have my girl Because I'm not screwing you. No, it's not the coffee-stained text of a long-lost Dylan song, unearthed by a curious janitor. Nor is it a forgotten outtake from a 1960s leftist manifesto. Instead, the somewhat strained diatribe against rampant authoritarianism comes from the songwriting archives of Dana Tyrone Rohrabacher, Orange County's own conservative congressman.

February 25, 1994 | TIM PAGE, NEWSDAY; Page is an entertainment writer for Newsday. and

I'm going to miss Spy Magazine. With this simple statement, I'm sure I've just made some new enemies, but I don't care. I know that the magazine, which announced last weekend that it would fold after the next issue, was sometimes frivolous, sophomoric--even downright vicious. Many of my friends were bludgeoned by Spy at one time or another and I've taken a punch or two myself in the dreaded "Review of Reviewers" section. Still, at its best, Spy was probably the funniest magazine around.

Creative Artist's Agency is said to be livid about cheeky Spy magazine printing its high-powered client list (Newman, Streisand, Stallone et al). Her-Ex's Page 2 claimed CAA partner Michael Ovitz was so furious that he hired his own spy to try to ferret out the weasel who leaked the TOP SECRET document. The kicker: As good as the Spy list was, it was hardly complete--and several CAA clients are miffed about being omitted.

July 22, 1994 | PAUL D. COLFORD, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES: Paul D. Colford is a columnist for Newsday

As Spy magazine rises from the grave with a summer issue that reprises some of its greatest hits about Hollywood, the New York Times and other media institutions, it also features a new mediacentric department, "Magazine Heaven," to chronicle the fab, clubby and ruthless ways of New York's mag industry. Spy starts with four pages about Conde Nast. And is it any wonder? Conde Nast Publications Inc.

May 13, 1994 | PAUL D. COLFORD, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES; Paul D. Colford is a columnist for Newsday. His column is published Fridays

As chronicled at length in Inside Media, a biweekly trade publication, the last days of Spy were marked by nasty feuding among the staffers--the kind of meltdown the magazine used to gleefully discover in somebody else's back yard. "One of the plans had been to plant cocaine in my desk and then call the police," said a bitter Tony Hendra in the article.

February 25, 1994 | TIM PAGE, NEWSDAY; Page is an entertainment writer for Newsday. and

I'm going to miss Spy Magazine. With this simple statement, I'm sure I've just made some new enemies, but I don't care. I know that the magazine, which announced last weekend that it would fold after the next issue, was sometimes frivolous, sophomoric--even downright vicious. Many of my friends were bludgeoned by Spy at one time or another and I've taken a punch or two myself in the dreaded "Review of Reviewers" section. Still, at its best, Spy was probably the funniest magazine around.

Spy Magazine to Cease Publication: Spy magazine, known for its skewering of celebrities and its "separated at birth" photos, is ceasing publication after 7 1/2 years, the magazine announced. Tony Hendra, the editor in chief, said principal owner Jean Pigozzi closed Spy after failing to sell it. The 78th and final issue of Spy will be on newsstands in New York on March 1 and nationally March 8, said advertising director Elaine Alimonti. Pigozzi had no comment, his spokesman, Michael Simoff,

The February issue of Spy magazine includes a none-too-flattering look at how rich L.A. parents scheme to get their kids into exclusive power kindergartens. Singled out for a good thrashing is the Westside's very own Crossroads School, described by Spy as a "funky campus overlooking the Santa Monica Freeway" with a non-traditional program that has attracted the children of Barbra Streisand, O.J. Simpson, Bob Dylan and Robert DeNiro.

Ponder the sea gulls pecking for aromatic kitchen scraps among the flapping pages of the thousands of magazines that blanketed the country this year in weekly, monthly and seasonal waves, before bulldozers shoved them into ever-deepening strata in America's sanitary landfills. Ponder, too, that millions and millions of brains nationwide have absorbed a year's worth of magazine content--brilliant, mediocre and inane.

The February issue of Spy magazine includes a none-too-flattering look at how rich L.A. parents scheme to get their kids into exclusive power kindergartens. Singled out for a good thrashing is the Westside's very own Crossroads School, described by Spy as a "funky campus overlooking the Santa Monica Freeway" with a non-traditional program that has attracted the children of Barbra Streisand, O.J. Simpson, Bob Dylan and Robert DeNiro.

The quality of smugness tends to work better amid the impersonality of elegant font on the printed page than on screen with a smirk and an overbearing laugh track. Nonetheless, "The Spy Magazine Hit List: The 100 Most Annoying and Alarming People and Events of 1992" (at 10 tonight on NBC, Channels 4, 36 and 39) is nearly as funny a TV special as it is a magazine spread, with actual film clips of Quayle, Perot, Schwarzenegger and the usual Spy suspects inevitably compounding the merry malice.

You can't legislate my morals, Or anything I do I can have my pot, or have my girl Because I'm not screwing you. No, it's not the coffee-stained text of a long-lost Dylan song, unearthed by a curious janitor. Nor is it a forgotten outtake from a 1960s leftist manifesto. Instead, the somewhat strained diatribe against rampant authoritarianism comes from the songwriting archives of Dana Tyrone Rohrabacher, Orange County's own conservative congressman.